14.4.08

Tech-Savvy Leaders?

In the New York Times' The Lede, blog, there is a story on Russia's new president, Dmitri Medvedev. Apparently, he has made a point of showing the world how technologically comfortable he is.

“I was digging around in Odnoklassniki yesterday,” Mr. Medvedev said in a speech at Russia’s annual Internet Forum this month, referring to Russia’s version of classmates.com. “I found about 630 Dmitri Medvedevs,” he said. “Some of them looked a lot like me, almost like twins.”The speech and Mr. Medvedev’s expressed interest in social networking suggest that he is going to be one of the world’s more tech-savvy leaders. In fact, this was not the first time that Mr. Medvedev has showed off such knowledge.

Is it that big a deal for world leaders to be able to use the Internet? I don't know how long it will take for people to forget Al Gore's ubiquitous claim to have invented the Internet (whether he actually claimed that or not is still up for debate). What about George Bush's Internet usage? Here's one take (although whether this is an actual Internet knowledge issue or a language issue is unclear).

John McCain was born in 1936. Does he understand the Internet? Does it really matter? George Bush doesn't read the news and has no idea how much gasoline costs. I guess it's cool if we have a leader on Classmates.com or Facebook or whatever, but in all honesty they probably have better things to spend their time on anyway.